


sometimes the clothes do not make the man

by bijasi



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, Genderfluid Harry Styles, she/her harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22810795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bijasi/pseuds/bijasi
Summary: Harry visits Alessandro for another fitting, but Alessandro has another outfit in mind that might work just a touch better.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	sometimes the clothes do not make the man

Harry shifts a bit under Alessandro’s gaze, but she doesn’t make a sound. She’s been standing here for nearly twenty minutes - which is quite typical at round three of their personal fittings of an outfit - but there’s something _about_ the outfit this time.

She hasn’t exactly seen what she looks like fully in it. One of Alessandro’s rules, of course. She doesn’t see the full image until he’s ready for her to. So she only sees what she can - which is what the outfit looks like before it’s on her, and only what she can see if she looks down. It’s not the best way to really view it, especially considering it’s not her favorite angle of herself. 

It’s gotten better - some days a lot better. But, there are other days…

“Turn a bit to the left?”

She snaps her gaze back up to see Alessandro tilting his head, arms crossed and with one finger tapping on his lip as he stares somewhere down by her waist.

She obliges and stares at the space in the corner of the room where the back wall meets the window. There are thick, silk curtains that drip from the window like a constant running stream whenever the wind makes them dance. They’re gold, but Harry’s come to know them as safety.

“Just an adjustment, Zucchero.”

It’s not merely a sentence in Alessandro’s house. It’s another instruction. So when he turns to retrieve his pins, Harry acquiesces - her bare feet pressing into the soft cushioned stool as she lifts herself onto it again. 

She watches in silence as Alessandro comes to tug bits of the material in at her waist, folding in a few more small hollows and pinning them to the rest that are bunched up in place. It creates a few more folds that run down like the curtains. _Safety_ , she remembers. 

“Getting so skinny here,” Alessandro comments easily while adjusting the way the material falls. “I’m going to have to change my notes for you.”

“Sorry.”

Alessandro looks up at her immediately.

Harry shakes her head, swallowing the apology. Alessandro’s always been very clear with her about saying the word. _(Never in the context of yourself, Zucc.)_ She’s still getting used to the idea of being unapologetic. Some days it’s easy. But there are always others.

Alessandro is back to adjusting the folds fully around her now; his fingers are nimble things that Harry can barely even feel. 

After a few more minutes of this, Alessandro speaks again quietly, fixing the twist of the banded sleeve at her bicep. (It’s a contrast to her waist. Where one has gotten smaller, the other has expanded. But then, it’s not her place to ask for longer sleeves.) “I always liked this one.”

She looks down at the bottom half of the anatomical heart inked into her skin.

“Beauty lies in the truth of things, not what others find more appealing.”

She thinks of the other heart stationed just a bit higher, hidden by the small puffed sleeve. All gentle curves and neat edges - filled in evenly and perfectly. 

“Because it’s ugly, because it’s too hard to picture,” he continues, neatening the collar, “it’s too hard for people to accept. That doesn’t change what it is.”

Harry’s gaze stays on Alessandro as he works. 

Alessandro finally steps back and takes in Harry’s look. “Okay, Zucc,” he nods. “You can look now.”

Harry quietly steps down from the stool, careful not to trip over the material, and pads across the room to the master bathroom. It’s just about as big as the bedroom, but where the window takes up the east wall in there, a floor-to-ceiling mirror takes up the west wall in here.

Harry’s lungs tuck themselves in, shrink only a bit. 

The shirt is a thin, sheer green. There’s a white lace collar poking out from the top to match the bands of the sleeves and the neckline of it drops low to her breastbone, neatly seamed into a V shape. 

The trousers are dark green, the bunched folds coming in around the waistline and falling loosely down her legs into wide hems that puddle on the floor around her feet. 

Behind his reflection, he sees Alessandro leaning against the doorjamb. “You look disappointed.”

“No, no,” Harry shakes her head and looks back at the trousers. “Of course not.”

“Come.”

Harry snaps her gaze back to Alessandro, who’s already turned and walked back into the bedroom, leaving in his place the reflection of the golden curtains. She looks back down at the trousers.

“Zucchero.”

Harry blinks her focus back and walks into the bedroom to find Alessandro rustling through one of his trunks. 

“Out of those, please? Remove the pins at the sides first.”

Harry obliges, silently unclipping the safety pins before unzipping and slipping out of them. She neatly folds them once, twice, and then puts them on the bed next to the kit.

She looks down at her legs. Her hair has gotten a bit longer, and she might touch that up a bit - not removed completely, but just touched up. She tucks the idea away for now though, she knows there’s no reason to just yet. She runs a finger quickly over the seam of her panties, untwisting where the material bunched in the crease of her thigh. 

“Up, up.”

Harry let’s the band snap back in place and then steps back up onto the stool, staring ahead at the wall.

Alessandro is back and she looks down as he wraps a different stretch of material around her waist, the same color as the trousers. It’s nothing she has to step into this time, but that’s usually how it begins anyway. Measurements first. Cuts and threading later. There’s never any actual shape to her outfits for quite some time. 

Her muscles are used to the standing and balancing. The dull ache in her thighs and calves is just a whisper now.

The sunlight moves across the room as Alessandro works, the sounds of rustling material, metal scissors and clipping pins. Harry’s eyes roam the room and her thoughts roam everything from the session she has to plan with Mitch that weekend to the phone call she keeps forgetting to make to Britney. She still hasn’t figured out a plan for her nails, but there’s still time. 

The fourth time that Alessandro steps back from Harry, he nods. “Down. Go look.”

Harry frowns at him and looks down thinking, surely it’s not finished.

“Down.” Alessandro gestures toward the bathroom.

She eyes Alessandro again hesitantly before she steps down from the stool carefully, moving the material a bit so as not to stretch it wrongly before it’s technically finished. She pads back into the bathroom and slows in front of the mirror, eyes dropping to her legs. 

The dark green material is still bunched at her waist, just like the trousers before. It falls in little rivulets, not quite as neat as those, but done up as quickly as they were, they still look good - intentional - with the way they fall down over her hips and flare wider down her thighs. 

Everything tapers off at a messily pinned hem just above her knees. 

“There will be lace there,” Alessandro comments gently behind her. 

“It’s a skirt,” Harry says dumbly.

“Observant, Zucc,” he laughs.

Harry turns at her waist, her feet still firmly planted. The back of the skirt falls over her and drips off lazily down.

“I may pin a bit more tucks in around the waist in the final version. It’ll create a bit more flare when you turn.”

“Flare?” Harry says, the image immediately popping up in her head. There’s a hopeful stir in her chest.

“Spin.”

Harry glances at Alessandro’s reflection and then back down to the skirt. She’s of course, worn one before. There was the long dress she wore for about an hour for a photo shoot, there was the long skirt she wore for another. There was the kilt - if she wants to count that. (She does, she always has.)

But this feels different suddenly. Her outfits for tour are always intentional. And what makes this different is - it’s not a dress or skirt for art in a magazine, it’s not a kilt in Scotland. This is a skirt - a short, girly thing that she can take and wear in a city on a stage wherever she wants. This isn’t for art, this is for comfort. 

She twirls slowly, craning her neck to try to keep her eye on the skirt.

“Qui,” Alessandro beckons her to face him. He’s got Harry’s phone out now facing her. “Go on.”

Harry spins again and then looks up at him in question.

“Again,” Alessandro says, gesturing his finger in a lazy circle. “A bit faster.”

Harry spins again, and this time when she looks down, she sees it flare out around her. A small laugh breaks from her chest.

“Keep going, Zucc.”

She glances up at him and then moves her arms as she spins, using them for more weight. She makes it four circles before she stumbles to a dizzy stop, breathy laughter breaking from her.

“Look at you,” Alessandro smiles, lowering the phone. “How do you feel?”

“It’s fun,” she says, quietly.

“Good. Fashion should be fun. Come here. Now really look at you.”

Harry walks over and tilts her head down at the phone in Alessandro’s hands. 

He presses play on the video and Harry watches herself twirl, the folds of the skirt blossoming out around her thighs as the sound of her laughter echoes out through the speaker. She watches herself stumble to the stop, breathing through her smile.

“It can be done in two weeks,” Alessandro says quietly.

Harry swallows. “And the trousers?”

“Will still be here if you change your mind.”

Harry looks back down at the still frame of the video and then over to her reflection.

Alessandro taps the anatomical heart on her bicep without a word.

“Do I have to decide right away?” Harry asks.

“Of course not,” he says, tucking a curl back into the pin in her hair. Quite a few have escaped in her twirls, but she finds she doesn’t mind much. “You decide whenever you want to. And whatever you decide, we go with. And, until then, I think I have another idea.”

Harry turns to him with raised brows.

“Not quite something for tour, but I think you’ll like it.”

Harry’s mouth twists. “Do I have to stand on the stool again?”

Alessandro laughs gently and drops his hand from Harry’s curls, seeming to give up on their wild nature. “No, this one’s already been made. I think it’ll fit just perfectly.”

Harry’s face brightens.

“Come, let’s get this off of you so I can work on it. And I’ll give you something else to wear in the meantime.”

Harry nods as Alessandro leads her out of the bathroom, but she gives one last glance back to herself in the skirt, folds coming down like the golden curtain reflected behind her. She thinks maybe she can start to find safety in this, too, and decides that maybe that’s the point of her shows after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this fic. Harry deserves to smile every day.
> 
> If you enjoyed this piece, consider following me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/bijasiwrites) !
> 
> Thank you always.  
> Love you always.


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